Lars and the Real Girl
Lars (Ryan Gosling) retreats from human contact and interaction. He lives in the garage of his dead parents’ house now occupied by his older brother Gus and his wife Karin (Emily Mortimer), goes to work in a cubicle where a friendly nerdy woman flirts with him to no avail, and studiously avoids people at all costs. Then, in the gimmick of this awkward-loner movie, he orders a custom-made life-size sex doll, names her Bianca, and proudly introduces her around as his girlfriend. He has (one-sided) conversations with her and wheels her around in a wheelchair because of her poor health. Advised by Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), the doctor in the small isolated town in the northern midwest, to play along with Lars’s delusion, the rest of the town shows remarkably consistent patience. He takes her to church and social gathering and not once does anyone crack wise about his artificial companion. At least not to his face. There are some laughs associated with this make-believe, and Ryan Gosling does a good job at portraying an honestly tormented man with a child inside still haunted by childhood abandonment issues. But even at a relatively slim hour and three-quarters, I found my patience with Lars was less generous than that of his town. They play along with such gusto and emotional investment that it’s almost as if they’re delusional as well. At some point, as Lars inevitably begins to let go of Bianca, I couldn’t help wondering if they were going to have to keep this charade up for the rest of their lives. Would Lars at some point look back and joke about the time he was in love with a doll?